Book Reviews-The King of Elfland's Daughter, Fearless Jones

The King of Elfland's Daughter
By Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) was a true Renaissance Man (poet, author, playwright, chess champion, nobleman, pistol shooting champion, veteran of three wars, big game hunter, professor, animal rights activist) who had a profound influence on such writers as disparate as J.R.R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman,(check out Stardust) Michael Moorcock, Evangeline Walton, David Eddings, H.P. Lovecraft, and even Robert E. Howard.

Sadly I had never read Lord Dunsany before and since I have roughly 300(!!) or so books waiting to be read I decided to finally start reading his work and see if it held up to the wonderful things that other writers had said about the author. It did. Man, did it ever. Dunsany possessed a lyrical fluid verbosity with prose which put you in mind of Shakespeare in some ways. It's not enough to say that H.P. Lovecraft bit off of Dunsany. In some places he devoured him whole. Although The King of Elfland's Daughter (TKED) is a short book, it is incredibly dense and will leave you wanting more.

To just digress for a moment in J.R.R Tolkien's legendarium elves and humans do not normally intermarry and when they do there's often tragedy. Elves are virtually immortal and ageless while humans of course deteriorate rapidly from an elvish POV and die like mayflies. The two peoples experience Time differently and have slightly different relationships to their Creator. Humans are jealous of elves' immortality and fearful (thanks to the Enemy's lies) of the Gift of Death. Elves do not understand human haste and restlessness and seeming need of change for change's sake. Humans who seek after elvish immortality are dabbling in things they do not understand and generally come to very bad ends indeed. Tolkien just paints this in very broad strokes though and moves on to other things in most of the works published in his lifetime. 

In TKED Dunsany dove a little deeper and actually made a pretty compelling tale of the problems that a mixed marriage might bring. In Elfland Time does not exist or moves at such a slow state that it is virtually nullified. There is no rush to do anything. Moments of bliss can literally last for eternity. Of course while Time stands still in Elfland it rushes in the mortal world. A human who spends what he thinks of as a short time in Elfland may return to the mortal word and find that a decade or more has passed. Similarly an elf or other denizen of Elfland may come to our world and be excited and more than a little frightened by the constant change of seasons, people aging, sunsets and moonrises and all of the other things which humans take for granted. An elf has no religion and sees no reason why she shouldn't worship the stars. In TKED you get an idea of how far love would have to stretch when a human would have to find the words to explain to an elf that laughing and singing at funerals or talking to goats is not considered proper.

This mixed marriage and several other events are set into motion when the Parliament of Erl decides that their home area needs to be better known. To this end they tell their aged lord that nothing personal but they would prefer to be ruled by a magic lord. The noble thinks this a silly idea but is bound to follow the rule of Parliament in most things. He sends his son Alveric on a quest to bring back the King of Elfland's daughter, marry her and then produce an heir who will have magic. Alveric is a dutiful son and proceeds to follow his father's instructions to the letter. It's what happens after his initial quest, which is completed within the first few chapters, that makes this book unusual and well worth the read. Again, Lord Dunsany had a beautiful way with prose. The images he created are vivid and almost leap off the page. His wording is odd but strangely compelling. It's like the writers of the King James Bible turned their skills to even more fantastical stories. Here's an example:

She wore a crown that seemed to be carved of great pale sapphires; she shone on those lawns and gardens like a dawn coming unaware, out of long night, on some planet nearer to us than the sun...And Alveric gazed in her eyes all speechless and powerless still; it was indeed the Princess Lirazel in her beauty.

Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water.

TKED is a great little novel (almost short enough to be a short story) about the perils of inviting magic in your life, the glory and madness of true love, and how sometimes you should be careful what you ask for. Good stuff. But for the last time what makes this story stand out is not the plot or the characters but the language. It's a fairy tale in the best sense of the term.

Fearless Jones
by Walter Mosley

Fearless Jones was Walter Mosley's return to noir crime fiction set in post war LA. It is quite similar to his Easy Rawlins work so if you like those stories I think you will enjoy Fearless Jones. It even takes place in the same universe and the legendary Mouse is name checked. Like the Easy Rawlins stories, Mosley has split the hero into two characters. There is the quiet more analytical man, who's not quite cowardly but certainly doesn't go looking for trouble or violence and prefers to think or negotiate his way out of a tough jam. Then there's the more brash fellow who's not stupid but would rather be acting than thinking when it comes down to it, won't back down from anyone, and is no stranger to severe acts of violence. 

In this book the first sort of man is Paris Minton. Minton is a relatively short man who doesn't have a lot of luck with ladies and generally keeps a low profile as much as he can. He's a go along to get along type of fellow. He runs a used bookstore, one which he maintains despite routine harassment from racist cops. He doesn't make a lot of money from his business but it's enough to pay his rent and allow him to do what he likes to do best all day, which is read and not bother or be bothered by people.

One day Minton is minding his own business when a beautiful woman runs into his store and asks him if a Reverend Grove is there. Once Minton stops drooling over her looks he explains that Grove had a church down the street but moved out a short while before. She's in despair and runs into Minton's back room. A thug comes in asking for the woman and then beats Minton like a rented mule. Once he's awake Minton runs into the woman again. Her name is Elana Love. She tells him a rather fantastic story, makes love to him, and then steals his car. Confused Minton goes back to his shop only to find out that someone burned it down. And suddenly people are shooting at him. 

Minton decides that it's time to spring his buddy from the clink, one Fearless Jones, so nicknamed because he really doesn't give a bleep who you are, if you hurt him or his there's gonna be hell to pay. Jones is a WW2 vet. And only Minton knows how far Jones is willing to go to help his friends. And Minton needs help. This all happens in the first 20-30 pages. It's a breakneck speed read that kicks off an initially confusing but ultimately rewarding tale of revenge, international intrigue, organized crime, and black life in mid 20th century Los Angeles. Mosley had a Jewish mother and his depiction of Jewish home life and food are quite entertaining and interesting. Jones tells the over cautious Minton that although Minton is not what Jones would describe as full-bad ,that description being reserved for Jones himself and two or three other men, including the dreaded Mouse, Minton is nonetheless a hero because he tries to do the right thing despite his fears whereas Jones simply isn't afraid of anything on God's green earth.

This was a good read but quite complex. You might have to occasionally go back a few chapters and see who a seemingly small character really was. I liked that though. It will stretch your reading comprehension in a good way.

Wisconsin Sikh Shooting, Gun Control, Wade Michael Page and Profiling

When the shooting in Aurora occurred a lot of people (especially NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) ran to the nearest microphone or blog and spoke or wrote with heartfelt indignation of their beliefs that no one needed an "assault rifle" and such things were only good for killing mass numbers of people, only the military or police should have "assault rifles" or large capacity magazines, and that those people who supported the right to own "assault rifles" had blood on their hands and so forth and so on.

These people gingerly ignored the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicides carried out with guns are done with handguns, not rifles of any kind. These people also neglected to notice the inconvenient detail that the Founders did not want an unarmed populace and an armed to the teeth military and police.

Now we just had the neo-nazi nut in Wisconsin who appears to have used a legally acquired handgun with normal capacity magazines to kill six people and wound four. The man was being monitored by certain private groups that keep an eye on noticeable hateful individuals mostly of the right-wing variety.  There is of course a legitimate question, given how the right reacts to mass murders carried out by non-whites, if whiteness as a concept needs to have the same criticism directed at it as other nationalist or racially based identities. As the United States continues to change demographically will there be other such incidents? I don't think so but you never know...


There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the FBI or other government agencies were aware of Page and his views. The slaughter caused an increase in tension with the Indian government and Indian citizens who burned US flags and said that the US needed to do more to protect Sikhs.

The Indian government rushed its consul general from Chicago, N.J. Gangte, to Wisconsin. India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said the government was awaiting the results of the U.S. investigation and he criticized the gun culture in the United States.

‘‘The U.S. government will have to take a comprehensive look at this kind of tendency which certainly is not going to bring credit to the United States of America,’’ he said.

I'm not so sure that a country which regularly persecutes Muslims and Christians and has frequent mass outbursts of horrific violence directed at those groups has any room to lecture the United States about "culture" but whatever. India's murder rate is comparable to that of the United States and the actual number of people killed is about three times higher than in the United States. And for the most part missionaries in the US don't have to worry about being burned alive by people of different religions. People in the United States don't often become so livid that a Jehovah's Witness knocked on their door, that they gather a whole bunch of friends and start pogroms against Jehovah's Witnesses. But you know how it is, everybody thinks their own stuff doesn't stink. As a NYT column cogently pointed out we simply do not live in a society that allows punishment or incarceration for bad thoughts. With only a few exceptions, you can't incarcerate people for what they might do. Page had the freedom to be a Nazi and a white supremacist. He had the freedom to think that non-whites were inferior. He even had the freedom to call for unspecified action. It's only when you either take action or make a specific threat or plan of action that the authorities can legally intervene. There are of course many sting operations that the government carries out against groups it considers to be fringe or dangerous but one man's legally justified sting operation is another man's example of an out of control Leviathan government determined to criminalize political dissent and crush opposition by fair means or foul. And even in the sting operation you usually have to DO something illegal. As the NYT column points out, there are a lot of things to take into account when we start to consider ways to prevent crime. These aren't easy questions to address. No, not by any means.

The perfect prevention of crime asks us to consider exactly how far individual freedom extends. Does freedom include a “right” to drive drunk, for instance? It is hard to imagine that it does. But what if the government were to add a drug to the water supply that suppressed antisocial urges and thereby reduced the murder rate? This would seem like an obvious violation of our freedom. We need a clear method of distinguishing such cases.

One way is to keep in mind the distinction between thoughts and actions. A traditional rule in criminal law holds that there can be no crime unless the defendant committed some act: mere thoughts, no matter how horrific, are not sufficient. Thoughts cannot be regulated; everyone has a right to think what they wish without government intrusion.

As far as the gun, again it is important to point out that the gun was purchased legally. It is not illegal to be a tattooed Nazi and own guns. You can purchase hate literature and associate, date, marry or reproduce with someone who feels the same way that you do. You can teach your children racial hatred. You can spread racial hatred through your books, audio tapes, websites, speeches, music and radio or television shows. You can unabashedly call for expulsion and/or genocide of people who don't look like you.

That is what freedom means. It's not just about the Second Amendment. It's about the entire Bill of Rights, which taken in whole, effectively indicates that you have the right to think what you want, say what you want and must be left alone by government except under very particular circumstances. If you're comfortable with the idea of getting rid of the right to bear arms are you also comfortable with the idea of government prior restraint on "bad" ideas? Or is that an assault on your freedom? I may not think anyone "needs" to listen to hate music. Do you want me deciding what hate music is? What test to purchase a gun could you devise that Page would fail and that other people would pass? Ironically this racist garbage was a Stevie Ray Vaughn fan.  Stevie Ray Vaughn was a white man who openly admitted his love for black music, performed with black musicians and who created music that spoke of peace, love and brotherhood. How does a hate rock performer idolize such a man? Again, is there necessarily any music association test we could create that would be able to predict Page's actions?

The "cost" of this freedom, bluntly, is that some people will use it for evil. There is no way to prevent this without tearing up the entire Constitution and starting anew with a radically different understanding of the proper relationship between the state and the individual. Maybe we should do that. I don't think we should. Even a much more interventionist and restrictive government can not prevent people from doing ill. So you may not like to hear that but unless you want to live in a A Clockwork Orange type of society, in a very real way evil is the price of freedom. I'm willing to pay that price. We can't un-bite the apple. Our eldil is bent and that is that.

What's your take?

Was there any way this massacre could have been prevented?

Should hate speech be outlawed? Should the First Amendment be repealed?

Should preventive detention be widely used?

Should the federal government infiltrate and destroy fringe groups?

Should handguns be banned?

Music Reviews-BB King, Tramaine Hawkins

BB King-King of the Blues

Known as the "King of the Blues", Riley "BB" King is the best known, most influential and last living member of the three great Kings of the Blues (Freddie and Albert King being the other two) and is likely even today the single most recognized bluesman of all time. There are many reasons for this. The primary reason is that it is almost but not quite impossible for any guitarist born after BB King and playing guitar in an electric blues, rock, rock-n-roll, or blues rock context not to count him as a primary, secondary or tertiary influence. Lots of things that are electric guitar cliches now weren't cliches when King invented them in his twenties and thirties. The secondary reason is that for multiple decades King has maintained a gruesome and grueling 250-300 night or more tour schedule, one that only in recent years has begun to make allowances for his advanced age and health issues. He was paying the cost to be the boss indeed. There are very few musicians on the planet who are instantly identifiable after you've heard them sing or play just one note. It's a short list and BB King is at the top.


BB King's music is blues but it is blues that successfully synthesizes a number of different influences, especially uptown jazz and down home gospel. King's primary influences on guitar included such jazz guitarists as Lonnie Johnson, Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, blues guitarists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Elmore James, jazz horn players like Louis Jordan, Lester Young, and people who like King, walked a fine line between jazz and blues. I am speaking of such people as Lowell Fulson, and of course the incomparable T-Bone Walker, who as much as anyone is BB's most direct influence on guitar. King took Walker's sound, studied it, absorbed it and created his own.

You can't talk about King without talking about his masterful left hand vibrato which he says came about from trying (and failing) to play slide like his cousin Bukka White. Since, in his words, he had "stupid fingers", he had to do something different. And I think he succeeded in doing that. BB King, along with people like T-Bone, Otis Rush, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Ike Turner, Freddie King and a few others was responsible for helping to transition much post WW2 electric blues and rock from a band driven context to one in which the soloist got much more emphasis. He was truly one of the first guitar heroes. Like some of his contemporaries (Miles Davis) but unlike other musicians that came afterwards (Buddy Guy, Coltrane or Hendrix) King usually took a "less is more" approach. His leads and solos are smooth and do not try to show off every musical phrase he knows in a short time frame. There is often a lot of space in his arrangements and his solos.

Vocally he has a style that walks a line between a Baptist preacher and a smooth crooner. You can hear traces of James Cleveland, Ray Charles, Charles Brown, Louis Jordan, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra, Eddie Jefferson, Joe Williams, Joe Turner and Johnny Hartmann in BB King's singing. He even occasionally employed a fine falsetto to great effect. BB King was born in 1925 and so his voice has finally roughened and cracked with age. But in earlier days he was just as much known for his singing as for his guitar playing. In fact he has always viewed his guitar playing as an extension of his singing, which is one reason that he rarely plays and sings at the same time. Typically modest, he says he just can't do it. He also is not one for playing a lot of accompaniment, feeling that's what his band is for. I've heard him occasionally lay down pretty chordal work but he's correct in thinking that's not what people come to hear him for. But all the same he'll surprise you from time to time. Where Albert King's tone is slow, ominous and menacing, BB King's tone is fluid, sassy and biting. It's a testament to both men's skills and creativity that although they were both influenced heavily by T-Bone Walker, they always sounded so incredibly and immensely different. BB King has usually preferred Gibson ES-355 guitars. His guitars are always named Lucille, after the name of a woman who inspired a bar brawl in Twist, Arkansas where King happened to be playing one night. During the fight the kerosene heater tipped over and everyone ran for the exits, including BB King. But deciding that his sole guitar was worth the risk, King ran back into the burning building to save his guitar. Upon exiting with his cherished axe, King inquired after the name of the woman and thereafter always named his guitars after her to remind himself not to do something so stupid ever again.

Somewhat ironically and quite ignorantly King's music was often initially considered "not real blues" by some English blues snobs (and some white Americans too) who had no social context by which to judge King's fondness for extended humorous preacherly monologues on domestic relationships, jazzy big band sounds, gospel inflected vocals, music that could be danced to, or vamps that sounded to their ears like R&B. King wasn't just playing sad music. He had a facility for a variety of more sophisticated jazzy scales (major pentatonic) and rhythms that didn't necessarily fit the stereotype of a drunk illiterate playing simple music on a back porch somewhere. It wasn't until the late sixties that King started to cross over to white audiences, as black audiences transitioned to soul and funk. But King has always maintained a dedicated black audience as well. King has consistently fought against the stereotype of the dumb bluesman and has resisted both white and black characterization of the blues as backwoods type music. King was always sharp, both musically and sartorially, and dedicated to business. Being from Mississippi he always had some resentments for people who assumed he didn't know things and has lived a life of constant self-improvement. For example not a lot of people know that he is a licensed pilot.

King has been playing professionally since the late forties and like anyone with that sort of history has gone through a lot of different phases. There's the early pre-rock-n-roll sound, the jump-blues sound, a mid fifties uptempo blues sound, a hardcore Memphis blues sound, an early sixties soul-blues/afro-cuban sound, an seventies sound that nodded to funk and rock, some crooner albums, some jazz albums, some country tinged albums and even a few pop albums. Whatever your favorite style of music might be, there's a good chance that BB King has played it at one point or the other during his long career. There are still giants that walk this earth and BB King is such a man. If you've heard him then you know what I'm talking about. If not then please check out some of the tunes listed below. There are tons of albums, remastered cd releases, cut-outs, but for my money his best albums are Live at Ole Miss, Live and Well, Completely Well, My Kind of Blues, To Know you is to Love you, Live at the Regal and Live at San Quentin. And it's hard to go wrong with any single released before 1975 or so. 
The Thrill Is Gone(Live at Ole Miss) Chains and Things  No Good  Boogie Woogie Woman
Hummingbird  Paying the Cost to Be the Boss  The Thrill is Gone   Night Life
To Know You is to Love You (with Stevie Wonder)  Ain't Nobody Home  Sweet Sixteen
Don't Answer the Door  Why I Sing the Blues (Live)  3 o'clock in the morning(with Bobby Bland)
Sweet Little Angel (with Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck)  Ghetto Woman
When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer Woke Up this Morning

Tramaine Hawkins
Tramaine Hawkins is one of the greatest modern gospel singers. She first came to stardom as featured soloist on choir recordings done by her brother-in-law Edwin Hawkins and husband Walter Hawkins. She later went solo with some pop-gospel recordings in the late seventies. It's a funny thing about the attitudes that many gospel fans and musicians have around the music. There's often resistance to anyone who succeeds outside of a strictly religious based format even though much of African-American popular music has gospel roots.

The Hawkins Singers, despite being a religious group, did some secular music, collaborated with various non-gospel musicians and even when they played or sang gospel music did so in a way that made it very obvious that they shared DNA with then current soul and funk music. It's a fine line to walk and one which has a lot of hypocrites on both sides. What makes a song religious or secular can often just be a slight twist of lyric. There's not really THAT much difference between a person singing "Can't nobody do me like Jesus" on Sunday morning and that same person singing "My baby can make a dead man jump and shout" on Saturday night. Many times gospel performers themselves have felt compelled to point out their differences with secular music even though in some cases (i.e. some of Tramaine Hawkins' work) these differences were relatively minor.

Anyway I love Hawkins' voice and most of her recorded output-particularly her work with the Hawkins Singers and her early solo work. I can do without her more dance oriented/disco work ,(i.e. "Fall Down") but everyone has their own tastes. Her music always takes me back to a more optimistic time.
Holy One Goin up Yonder Changed Precious Memories Give me a Star
Highway Will You Be There Someday  Fall Down

Romney in Israel: Palestinian Culture, Occupation, Racism and Providence

*This was going to be a much longer post and one with a slightly different emphasis but as often happens work and other events intervened and required me to abbreviate it greatly. Hopefully that will be a good thing as I am always seeking to write more concisely anyway.

So boring apologia aside you may have heard that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a bit of a gaffe recently when he made remarks that could be construed as insulting  by comparing the Israeli culture to that of the Palestinians and suggesting that not only was the Israeli culture superior but also that the Israelis were blessed by God and that these two things explained the difference in economic success between the two peoples. Needless to say, this did not go over very well with the Palestinians, who blasted the statements as ignorant and racist. 

Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the nearby Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

"As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel.**

"And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence."

Of course Palestinians are not a key source of funding for Romney's campaign so Romney had no problem doubling down on his statements in a National Review editorial. Picking a fight with people who have virtually no representation in the Western media on behalf on people who have immense representation in the Western media would not seem to be a particularly brave thing to do but then again Romney never claimed to be a profile in courage. I do think however that he and his advisers, including the neo-con Dan Senor, really are being honest about their understanding of the difference in economic output between Israel, or more precisely, Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians, whether they live within the 1967 Israeli borders or in the occupied West Bank and restricted Gaza Strip. This honesty is useful. But it's not restricted to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's something that we see time and time again whenever one group of people have conquered or subjugated another one.

For example, let's say you are taking a shortcut off the expressway from one suburb to another and temporarily wind up in Inner City USA. You're going to notice that the houses and stores (if they exist) are not as new or as clean as in your area. You're going to notice that the people are demographically much different. You may find it prudent to lock your doors and windows.
You may not see a lot of economic activity.
Or let's say that you visit an Indian reservation. You will probably find a number of people who are suffering from alcoholism or unreported sexual assaults or obesity and diabetes. Again, chances are you won't find a huge number of new clean supermarkets.
You could repeat the same scene in a Brazilian favela or a number of Indian cities and so forth and so on.

Now if you lack curiosity or interest in what's going on around you and you REALLY don't want to know that people that look like you might have had something to do with those situations, it would be much easier on your ego to state that those people just have an inferior culture. They have chosen to make bad decisions and that's why they're where they are. It's too bad but unless and until they decide to be more like me, chances are they'll be in the same spot. I'm no racist but why don't they just do blah, blah, blah.. and so on.

On the other hand if you are historically curious or even slightly open to the idea that people aren't all THAT different and few people WANT to be impoverished or poor you might do some research and find out that the black people in the inner city are generally descended from people who had to work for free for over 250 years and were non-citizens for another 100 years. They also had their cultures, languages and religions erased and replaced with an ideology that told them they were the lowest of the low and God didn't look like them or love them. It's only in the past 40-50 years that some of that has started to slowly and fitfully change.

You might do some research and learn that those people you see on the "reservation" had and have a vibrant culture but were defeated in battle, slaughtered en masse and virtually exterminated from the continent. The reservations are almost always located in undesirable places that the larger society doesn't want and are both beyond many local legal protections and often subject to dictates from the Federal government.

Or were you Romney, you might do some basic research and discover that those Palestinians once had the majority of what is today Israel but like the American Indians, have fallen victim to a militarily superior group of people, who having ethnically cleansed much of Israel from Palestinian presence, are stubbornly continuing a policy of occupation, colonization and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians have been under military occupation longer than I've been alive. One of the critical things about military occupation is that it's rather difficult to build an independent functioning economy. EVERYTHING that a business or entrepreneur would need to build or expand his business can be revoked in the twinkling of an eye by a bully with a gun. Think you'll expand your factory in the next lot? Sorry, the IDF just took that lot over for artillery practice. Considering opening an olive supply business? Too bad, the army and settlers decided to uproot your olive grove for a new road for Jewish settlers. Want to open a pizza delivery business? Well you can forget about 30 minutes or less delivery as there are roadblocks and delays all over your area and even if there weren't, again any soldier who's in a bad mood can arbitrarily decide to prevent you or your drivers from traveling the next 5 miles-for no reason other than she feels like it.

I don't deny that cultures differ nor do I deny that some individuals need a kick in their a$$. Many of us know the uncle or friend who always has his hand out for a loan but avoids job interviews like a vampire avoids sunlight, the sister-in-law who always has the latest cell phone and apps but can't seem to plan for her mortgage, or the ne'er-do-well nephew who has big get rich quick plans that require your financial underwriting. It's precisely because we know these individuals that as individuals we can feel comfortable in saying "Get a job" or "No I'm not giving you any money" or "What you really need to do is blah, blah, blah".

But to generalize to a whole group of people and claim that their problem is their culture seems a bit much. You have to look at the whole picture. That picture is going to include ugly things like racism, genocide, self-hatred, and OCCUPATION. We might even flip the script, as Martin Luther King once suggested, to do an intensified study on the dominant group to ask what is the problem with THEIR culture?

There are several countries with higher per capita GDP than Israel. Would Romney suggest that those countries have a superior culture?
Romney ignored the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its unceasing land theft because those ugly little facts might have a little more to do with Palestinian economic growth than God not loving them or their deficient culture. Of course the Palestinians could have a bad culture that inhibits growth. To be sure, at the very least we would need to run an experiment in which the Palestinians put the Israelis under military occupation for multiple decades, imprison thousands of Israelis without trial or charges, and take more and more land.  Maybe even under those conditions the Israelis would be more economically productive than the Palestinians are today. Only one way to find out!!!

** I just have to mention the horrible irony of Romney giving his speech at the King David Hotel. This was the scene of a horrible terrorist attack by members of the hardline Irgun Jewish group. It killed over 90 people and has never quite been forgiven by the British or repudiated by the Israelis. In fact some Irgun members later became Israeli political leaders. One man's terrorist really is another man's freedom fighter.

What are your thoughts?

Were Romney's statements bigoted?

Does culture impact a society's economic success? If so how much?

Movie Reviews-(500) Days of Summer, The Woman in Black, Breaking Bad(Season One)

(500) Days of Summer
directed by Marc Webb

He came from somewhere back in her long ago The sentimental fool don't see, tryin' hard to recreateWhat had yet to be created once in her lifeShe musters a smile for his nostalgic taleNever coming near what he wanted to sayOnly to realize it never really wasShe had a place in his lifeHe never made her think twiceAs he rises to her apologyAnybody else would surely knowHe's watching her go"What a Fool Believes"-The Doobie Brothers
In romantic comedies and fiction it's often the woman who wants a long term exclusive relationship leading to marriage while it's the man who is intent on keeping his options open as long as humanly possible. This stereotype is enjoyed and promulgated by men and women for different reasons at different times. Both genders can seek out long-term and short-term relationships. In real life there are women who want to play the field for a while and men who walk around with their heart on their sleeve and fall in love quickly and permanently. We are all equally capable of such feelings. Much blues music is after all, a man singing about all the wonderful things he did for the love of his life and how she did him wrong. What happens when it's the man who's the incurable romantic and the woman who's the cynical realist who wants to keep her relationships casual? What if it's the man who overlooks red flags and thinks that he can change a woman? (500) Days of Summer is perhaps a romantic comedy but more of a coming of age story about love. Love is something which can't be bought, sold, required or demanded. It's a choice, not an obligation. You can't guilt trip someone into loving you. No matter how much you might love someone, you can't have a relationship with them if they don't feel the same way about you. Unusually the story is told from the man's pov. This is not Judd Apatow lowbrow material though. (500) Days of Summer is influenced by a true story. The film features the standard disclaimer that nothing is based on actual persons living or dead and that any resemblance is purely coincidental. However at the end of the boilerplate there is a line that reads 
"Especially you, Jenny Beckman. B****!."

Despite that bile the film is fair to both leads. It's an updated Annie Hall, The Graduate, Chasing Amy or When Harry Met Sally that is original, realistic, bittersweet and at turns both laugh out loud funny and somewhat pensive. If you have ever loved someone who didn't love you or been the object of someone's deep affection but found yourself simply unable or unwilling to return the intensity, I think you might enjoy this film. It is told in a non-linear manner. The movie's beginning shows the breakup's impact on Tom.  We see his desperate plans to get Summer back. The movie jumps back and forth in time over the roughly 500 days that Tom knew Summer.

The two leads, Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have great chemistry together. Deschanel's comic timing is perfect; her large eyed deadpan stare and staccato delivery is used to great impact.
Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a man who trained as an architect but upon entry into the workplace couldn't find employment in his field. So he has been working as a greeting card writer in a Los Angeles firm for longer than he likes. It's not a job he enjoys very much but it pays the bills.

When Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) joins Tom's workplace as an administrative assistant, despite the fact that she is described by the film's narrator as average looking, Tom is immediately smitten and ineptly but persistently seeks her attention. When she finally notices him, completely by accident, Tom and Summer discover that they have similar tastes in music, movies, and humor. They start a relationship. Or at least Tom does. As Summer calmly explains to him she doesn't really believe in relationships. She doesn't want a boyfriend. She doesn't want to get married. She just wants Tom as a friend, albeit one with certain benefits. Tom thinks he can live with that and even if he can't he's certainly not going to kick a naked and willing Summer out of his bed. The film's funniest scene is the morning after they have made love for the first time. A giddy dancing Tom gives fist bumps, daps, high fives and hugs to strangers as he leads a downtown marching band parade choreographed to Hall and Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True".  Fountains jet as he walks by. Animated birds sing to him and sit on his hand. At work he is a sudden source of happiness and inspiration to those around him.

However, as Tom's relationship adviser, his 13 year-old preternaturally intelligent sister Rachel (Chloe Moretz) gently points out, he might not be remembering the bad things about Summer. Of course the fact that he's taking relationship advice from baby sis is both funny and somewhat pathetic. The lack of different perspectives is the film's strength and weakness. We see everything through Tom's eyes but he's not necessarily a reliable narrator. Although he sees himself as a "nice guy" that may be why he's having an issue. He's just showing up for life and not taking control of things either professionally or romantically-not that the second would be even be possible with Summer. Summer sees herself as the more energetic partner in their "not-relationship" and strongly resists Tom's underhanded or open attempts to alter that dynamic or obtain a more formal commitment. Summer hurts Tom very badly and even outright cruelly humiliates him but as another woman points out, Summer never exactly lied to him. She just didn't share every little thing but then again who does? It is just possible, that working at a greeting card company that sells illusions of love and happily forever after, Tom may have gotten high on his own supply. Idealizing anyone is usually a pretty bad idea because you can get blinded to reality pretty easily. It happens sometimes. What are you gonna do? If someone assists you in lying to yourself are they the only bad guy? Sometimes you need to get hurt in order to change.

Both Tom and Summer mature. Tom works to bring his expectations more in line with reality while Summer learns it's okay to dream and believe in fate. Summer may do some bad things but she's not necessarily a bad person. Nonetheless as Sam Kinison joked in a similar situation, there are points at which, were you Tom, you might be hoping for her to get hit by a truck!!! Tom's desire to win Summer back is both understandable and perplexing. You may root for him. Or you may curse him for being a simp and Summer for being something worse. Again, Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt really shine together and were quite well cast.
(500) Days of Summer is easily one of the best films I've seen in a long time. The film makes judicious use of animation to express feelings. The music (mostly indie and some pop) fits the movie like a glove. The film's a new favorite. It shows you a vision of Los Angeles you may not have known existed. I ran across this film while looking for something else and I'm very happy I watched it. If you haven't seen this one please do yourself a favor and check it out. Whether you are a gooey romantic sap or a hardboiled cynic this film has something to say to you.

The girl don't love you boy and there's nothing you can do -"Things Don't Work Out Right"-Hound Dog Taylor

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The Woman in Black
directed by James Watkins

I watched this in part for a friend of mine who was curious if it was as creepy as the trailer made it look. I also wanted to see what sort of movies the revamped Hammer Films was producing these days. Well, The Woman in Black was on the creepy side but all in all I'd have to say this wasn't quite my cup of tea. It was hugely financially successful and critically well received. I wanted to like it more than I did but it didn't really do it for me. Maybe it will for you. It's by no means a bad movie. It's well made and well acted but not gory. If you are a Daniel Radcliffe fan, you might like it. He is the lead actor and is rarely, if ever off screen.
This film opens up with a seriously weird image of three young girls who see something in the window of their second story bedroom. They get up from their play, open the window and plunge to their deaths. You hear the screams of their parents but do not see them. The whole thing is spooky. A parent should never have to bury their child.
Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is a young British lawyer in turn of century London. He is a widower with a young son. He's still grieving for his wife's death and as a result his work is suffering. His boss is not running a charity ward and lets Kipps know, dead wife or not, either he gets with the program or he finds another place to work. To this end he gives Kipps what he thinks of as an easy assignment-close out the estate of one Alice Drablow, who owned a country manor known as Eel March house. Kipps is to go there, get the work done on time and under budget and return.
Kipps goes there and like any good horror film nobody wants to talk about the house. The local business contact, Mr. Jerome (Tim McMullen) tries to send Kipps back to London but Kipps isn't having it. He's been told that the bulk of the estate paperwork is in Eel Marsh house and that's where he intends to go. He's intent on this. You would be too if your boss told you to get something done by Friday or don't bother coming in on Monday. Despite unfriendliness from most of the locals, one man Samuel Daily (Ciarin Hinds) and his wife Elizabeth (Janet McTeer) let Kipps stay at their house for a while. Kipps learns that they had a son who died mysteriously and Elizabeth has gone over the deep end-claiming to channel their dead son. The next morning Kipps gets a reluctant but mercenary coachman to take him out to Eel Marsh house where he will stay the night. The creep factor is turned up dramatically as he starts hearing voices and noises. He sees strange things out of the corner of his eye. Objects are not where he left them. Finally he sees a ghostly woman in a black dress. Or maybe he doesn't. Supposedly seeing the Woman in Black means that a child will die soon.

From there is a pretty conventional ghost story. Someone died in pain and agony and is intent upon wreaking pain and agony upon children until its spirit is laid to rest. Kipps wants to solve the mystery. He has an uncertain ally in Samuel and either indifference or hostility from the rest of the townspeople. A fair number of children die in rather brutal circumstances while Kipps tries to get to the bottom of what's going on. There are a bit more than usual number of jump cuts and sudden pauses that intensify the weirdness factor. The death of the children makes this a bit more somber of a film than I had thought it would be. There are more than a few scary moments.
So why didn't I love this film? Hard to say. Maybe it's because when I think of Hammer Films I think of cleavage and technicolor and this film had neither. Even putting those aside the film could have done with a female lead. As I am not really a Radcliffe fan I found it hard to maintain interest. I wasn't too crazy about the ending either. All in all it sort of reminded me of a Supernatural episode, but not in a good way. This film definitely could have been improved by the Winchester Brothers showing up, kicking ghost a$$, dropping a few clever one liners and driving off into the night. Again, though that's just my opinion. YMMV. As it turns out James Watkins was also the director of the much superior modern horror/thriller film Eden Lake, which is definitely worth checking out, though it's quite different from his work here.
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Breaking Bad (Season One)

I don't actually watch a lot of television but my brother had been bugging me to check this out for a while. But since I am the oldest I don't always listen to him =) and hadn't bothered to watch this. Undeterred he sent me the first season. Grudgingly I must admit that he was right and I was wrong. That doesn't happen a whole lot as far as I'm concerned (just kidding!!!) but it's a pretty good show, at least going by the first season.
Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is an Albuquerque, New Mexico high school chemistry teacher with problems. Walter's a real nebbish. He has terminal lung cancer. Even before he discovered he's not long for the world he was going through a mid life (now end of life) crisis. He turns to cooking meth not only to prove to himself that he can be more successful than he's been but also to make money for his chemotherapy and leave wealth for his family after he's gone. It is odd to see someone I mostly remember from Malcolm in the Middle in this role but that's why they call it "acting", right? And Cranston is a good actor.

Breaking Bad has a surface similarity to Weeds in that it examines how would a white suburban middle-class individual who knows nothing else about drugs other than what he sees on TV get into drug dealing. It’s less self-consciously ironic than Weeds. I think I am on Weeds season 4. Unlike Weeds where hardly anyone gets killed and you always know that Nancy Botwin can probably get out of anything with a pleading glance of her big brown bedroom eyes, a show of leg and a slow sip on the long phallic Starbucks coffee straw she's always carrying around, Walter White has limited options. He has to do what he has to do. Some of his former college buddies run multi-million dollar corporations. It's time for Walter to start catching up. Death and drug dealing is not shown as hip, ironic or funny. It's messy, ugly and nasty. There are some comic moments but there's always a gritty realism to counterbalance them. 
Walter is interested in/bullied into going along on a drug raid by his alpha-male, not well read but smarter than he looks brother-in-law, Hank (Dean Norris) who is a DEA agent. While in the car he sees one of his former high school students, Jesse (Aaron Paul), escape detection and arrest. As Jesse's chemist is arrested and later killed he's in need of a new meth cook. And Walter is ready to walk on the wild side.

This show is not just about Walter's descent into moral depravity but it's also about the ugly physical effects of terminal cancer. If you have been unlucky enough to lose someone to this horror, some of the strongest scenes in the show may resonate with you a bit. We are never allowed to forget that Walter is dying. Whether it's the constant coughing and vomiting, sudden collapses or fainting spells, excretion of blood or other fluids, cancer is as big of a theme on this show as drugs. The story is made made more poignant because Walter's going to leave behind his blonde pushily optimistic pregnant wife Skyler(Anna Gunn) and their new daughter to be, as well as his palsy afflicted teen son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte). He tries and fails to hide the cancer from his family but does manage to keep other things secret. Raymond Cruz, who had a scary role as a Mexican gangster in Training Day, undertakes a much more unpredictably dangerous incarnation of that role here. Betsy Brandt is seen here as Walter's stylish sister-in-law, Marie. The first season was shortened by the writer's strike but I liked what I saw. Good stuff. I'm starting season 2 shortly.
Season 1 Trailer

Chick-fil-A, Boycotts, Gay marriage and Common Sense

The President of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, made statements that expressed his opposition to gay marriage for religious reasons. He is a conservative Christian.

'I think we’re inviting God’s judgment when we shake our fist at him, you know, "We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage." And I pray on God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try and redefine what marriage is all about,' he said. 

This immediately started requests for retraction and calls for boycotts, accusations of discrimination and most ominously government officials telling him to stay out of their vicinity.
This really touches on something that I've noticed for a while now and I don't think it's healthy. Both right and left do it.

1. The turning of honest difference of opinion into heresy that must be zealously stamped out.
2. The attempt to hurt someone's business for political reasons.
3. The attempt to get around free speech protections by recasting ideas as hate speech or discrimination.
4. The attempt to use government to achieve the first three points.

Whether we think that Dan Cathy is a bigot or not, his position on marriage, that it's between one man and one woman, is one held by millions of Americans, including until quite recently, President Obama. Remember this quote?  "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix." Of course the President said that before he was elected but I know he was being honest with us.  Perhaps Mr. Cathy will also "evolve" when he runs for President. Do we really want to say that everyone who supports traditional marriage is a hateful individual?

Is it a good idea to mix politics and business? This is a trickier question because obviously there are some instances where I do think boycotts are useful but those tend to be cases where the company is engaging in illegal or unethical  behavior (i.e. discrimination or pollution). I understand why people might oppose a new strip club or liquor store opening up in their neighborhood. But those examples aside is it good for you as an individual to only engage in commerce with people that agree with you on everything? Do you for example, not shop at Whole Foods because the founder and CEO, John Mackey is a free market libertarian who opposes ObamaCare and unions and doesn't believe in climate change? Or maybe you do shop at Whole Foods because the founder and CEO, John Mackey is a vegan who has been extremely helpful in the battle to increase standards for humane animal treatment, promoted organic foods and sustainable farming, has donated his stock portfolio to charity and placed caps on executive pay. Is it good for the country as a whole if everyone starts to disengage from people who are not like them? I don't understand the urge to punish people you don't agree with until they change their tune. The world is full of people who think my views are just as silly as I think theirs are. That's life.


If you work in a large corporation as I do there's an excellent chance that you will run across people in positions of authority that will have rather different views than you do. Take it from me it's NOT a good idea to get into political discussions with your direct supervisors about affirmative action, the war in Afghanistan or feminism. But if you discover that your boss's boss's boss thinks that Glenn Beck has it right, do you continue to work there? Or if you are of more conservative bent and you learn that the company CIO thinks the problem with this country is that it needs a good dose of Euro-style social welfare and confiscation of guns, do you stand up and tell her off and then quit? Or in those situations do you say, hey I need this job and as long as I am treated fairly I will stay? Because after all, business is business and those idiots people have a right to their opinions.

There is not as far as I know any claim that Dan Cathy oversees a corporate culture of gay hatred. He has not as far as I know publicly used anti-gay slurs, called for beatings of gays, claimed that he would refuse to hire, promote or serve gays, made anti-gay jokes, or made snide comments about Broadway or West Hollywood. All he did was say he believes that marriage is between a man and woman and contribute money to organizations that feel the same. For that Boston's Mayor Tom Menino sends a letter to Chick-fil-A stating that they are not welcome while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Aldermen are also making noises about preventing the company from expanding in Chicago. 


Whatever you think about Dan Cathy or his views, do you really want a government star chamber deciding, for purely political reasons, to try to prevent a company from doing business? That is a pretty obvious, blatant and ugly violation of the First Amendment. If you support that because you happen to think that Dan Cathy is a twit, then would you also support a local government in a more conservative area trying to prevent a lesbian bookstore from opening or demanding to know if a Curves franchise owner believes in abortion rights or sending questionnaires to a dance club to find out the owner's stance on interracial dating?
I think that any new boycott of Chick-fil-A will peter out just like the previous ones did. Remember that NAACP boycott of South Carolina or Target stores? Exactly.

QUESTIONS

Is it automatically bigotry to support traditional marriage?

Do you occasionally do business with people who hold different political beliefs than you do? If so where do you draw the line?

Is it smart business to put your religious or political views out there for debate?

Should local governments try to prevent Chick-fil-A from expanding?